Chapter 8: The Developer's Trap
Since it was a prearranged alliance, a meeting location must have been agreed upon before entering the game.
For example, Ian and his two former allies had agreed to meet at the Great Sept of Baelor in King's Landing.
However, due to his allies' withdrawal, he had changed his starting location to the Riverlands.
Now that his allies were gone, the other players wouldn't act the same way. They would undoubtedly rendezvous at iconic landmarks like the Inn at the Crossroads or some well-known tavern as planned!
With this "First Blood" quest driving the competition, wouldn't those prearranged allies become sitting ducks?
Granted, some players might become wary of such a quest and avoid the meeting, but humanity has never lacked risk-takers.
If there's a 20% profit, people are tempted; a 50% profit makes them reckless; for a 100% profit, they'll trample on all laws; and a 300% profit, they'll commit any crime, even risking the gallows.
And what kind of profit is this quest?
Setting aside attribute and skill points, the money alone is a whopping three thousand gold dragons. With this sum and two S-rank NPCs, a player could easily raise a small army of hundreds.
In a game where most players can't access resources from the system, what does it mean to be the first to obtain such a massive amount of resources?
They might be unstoppable for months to come, or even free themselves from the threat of assassination on the leaderboard, allowing them to develop freely as they please.
There's no reason for players not to take this risk.
"But the second problem remains!" Ian quickly composed himself. "How can players see through other players' disguises?
First, let's assume two allies who have agreed to meet at a pre-arranged location. But with the First Blood quest involved, they wouldn't be so reckless as to use the pre-arranged code to reveal their identities to each other, right?
They'd surely carefully conceal their identities while trying to suss out the others.
But how could a cautious player easily identify one another? They're all elite players who've fought their way through the preliminaries. How could they easily reveal their tells?
From the developers' perspective, since they've already designed things this far, it means they believe players can definitely identify each other. In other words, there must be some flaw that none of us know about or have overlooked."
Ian suddenly thought of the backstory. According to Annie, the backstory existed to help players blend in.
But clearly, the developers didn't want players to disguise themselves well. On the contrary, they wanted players to see through each other and fight.
This made the developers' design quite contradictory.
Unless there was something wrong with the backstory itself?
Ian quickly closed his eyes, activated the auxiliary system, and entered the Profile section to read his background story in detail again.
Soon, he did discover a small issue.
That is, he had no surname.
Originally, as a commoner in the Vale, he didn't have a surname at the beginning. However, in the subsequent story, he was knighted, which meant that he was entitled to be given a surname.
But he still had no surname, which was very unusual.
However, this was just a minor inconsistency, not a flaw that would be immediately discovered. Moreover, this issue was unique to players who started as hedge knights, and it wasn't a problem that all players shared.
"Right, all players. To achieve consistent detection, this flaw must be shared by all players, or at least the vast majority. In other words, what is this flaw we all share?"
What common denominator is there among players, one obvious enough to be easily detected by most?
It can't be that they all run around bunny-hopping, right? This is the real world! There's no way they can just spam jump everywhere, right? Wouldn't that be exhausting?
Ian pondered this question as he paced back and forth across the room.
Suddenly, his eyes fell on the set of equipment he had piled in the corner.
A longsword, a nasal helm, a gorget, an old chainmail hauberk, a pair of mail gauntlets, and a pair of greaves.
Suddenly, the preview image from the final character creation screen flashed before his eyes again.
"Shit! Starting equipment! It's the starting equipment!"
Every class starts with the same equipment, and more than 90% of players probably started with the five classes Ian had identified.
This meant that, aside from their faces, every aspect of the player's character loadout was identical to the preview image on the final character creation screen!
The Traveling Merchant was the most obvious, with their set of four servants, four old draft horses, two wagons, and seven mules practically a walking billboard (though, conversely, they'd undoubtedly notice this and make changes).
The Hedge Knight was next, as they possessed the full arsenal of equipment typically reserved for landed knights, yet lacked a single squire to attend them.
Of course, the Stranded Pirate and Brotherhood Hunter weren't much better. After all, these two classes were relatively uncommon, and one wielded a boarding axe, while the other wielded a yew longbow, making them easily identifiable.
In terms of stealth, perhaps only the Wandering Mercenary was slightly better. After all, Westerosi taverns were teeming with sellswords, and their starting set of worn leather armor, shortsword, and dagger was virtually identical to that of the native mercenaries.
But aside from the Wandering Mercenary, once the other classes appeared at the agreed rendezvous point, players would likely react immediately: "Wait, have I seen this exact loadout before?"
This was the true purpose of the developers' background story for the players!
They deliberately made the character creation options so complex, so that each player would focus on numerous differences and ignore the commonalities created by the standardized class equipment.
They had the AI deliberately frame the existence of the background story as "giving players background memories for better disguise," precisely to mislead players into believing their appearances would be difficult to detect!
The human brain often fixates on the first perspective it absorbs about a matter, even preventing people from actively considering alternative possibilities.
Even Ian himself had initially overlooked such a glaring flaw as the starting equipment!
Since the organizers could not interfere with the progress of the match in any way after it began, the developers chose this method to set up the board in advance, quickly triggering players to fight each other and making the competition more intense!
Damn it! Who would have thought that in this 100-player battle royale, the first enemy the players would face wouldn't be each other, but a trap laid by the devious developers!
(End of Chapter)
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